Best ARK Survival Ascended Server Settings for Small Groups

For a small ARK: Survival Ascended group, we recommend 3x taming, 2x XP, 2x to 3x harvest, and breeding sped up about 10x with cuddles coming 10 times as often, so a new baby grows up in an evening and still reaches 100% imprint. Rates like taming, XP and harvest go in GameUserSettings.ini under [ServerSettings], and breeding and imprinting go in Game.ini under [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]. Both files live in ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/.

Official rates are built for thousands of players grinding around the clock. A tribe of four with jobs does not have 10 hours to tame a Rex or five days to raise one. Below are the settings that matter, what they do, and the values we would actually start with.

Where are the ARK Survival Ascended server config files?

Both files sit in the same folder:

ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/GameUserSettings.ini
ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/Game.ini

The folder is called WindowsServer even when the server runs on Linux, because Survival Ascended only ships a Windows server build. Game.ini is often empty on a new server. That is normal: add the header line yourself and put your settings under it.

Two rules save you hours:

Stop the server before you edit. ARK writes its in memory settings back to GameUserSettings.ini when it shuts down, so edits made while it runs get overwritten.
The launch line wins. Anything passed on the start line, like ?XPMultiplier=2, beats the same key in the ini file.

If your changes refuse to stick, our settings not working guide walks through every cause.

Recommended rates for a small group

These are our starting points for 2 to 10 players. Official is 1 for every multiplier.

Setting	File	Official	Casual tribe	Boosted
`TamingSpeedMultiplier`	GameUserSettings.ini	1	3	5 to 10
`XPMultiplier`	GameUserSettings.ini	1	2	3 to 5
`HarvestAmountMultiplier`	GameUserSettings.ini	1	2	3 to 5
`ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier`	GameUserSettings.ini	1	0.5	0.5
`ItemStackSizeMultiplier`	GameUserSettings.ini	1	2	5
`MatingIntervalMultiplier`	Game.ini	1	0.1	0.05
`EggHatchSpeedMultiplier`	Game.ini	1	10	20
`BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier`	Game.ini	1	10	20
`BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier`	Game.ini	1	0.1	0.05
`CropGrowthSpeedMultiplier`	Game.ini	1	2	3

Casual is where we would start for a friend group that plays a few evenings a week. You still feel progression, but nobody sits on a Bronto for an hour. Go boosted if your group just wants to build and breed. Going much past 5x harvest tends to backfire: weight fills instantly and the early game is over in an afternoon.

A note on direction, because it trips everyone up. Higher is faster for taming, XP, harvest, egg hatch, maturing and crops. Lower is faster for anything measured as a wait: MatingIntervalMultiplier, BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier and ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier. Setting the mating interval to 10 does not speed breeding up, it makes it ten times slower.

GameUserSettings.ini: rates and quality of life

Everything here goes under the [ServerSettings] header. A small tribe config looks like this:

[ServerSettings]
TamingSpeedMultiplier=3.0
XPMultiplier=2.0
HarvestAmountMultiplier=2.0
ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier=0.5
ItemStackSizeMultiplier=2.0
DifficultyOffset=1.0
OverrideOfficialDifficulty=5.0
AllowFlyerCarryPvE=True
ShowMapPlayerLocation=True
AllowThirdPersonPlayer=True
ServerCrosshair=True
AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle=True
AutoSavePeriodMinutes=15.0

What the less obvious ones do:

Key	Default	Why you might change it
`DifficultyOffset` and `OverrideOfficialDifficulty`	0 and 5.0	Together at 1.0 and 5.0 they give wild dinos up to level 150
`AllowFlyerCarryPvE`	False	Lets flyers pick up dinos and players on a PvE server
`AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle`	False	Any tribe member can do the cuddle, not just the person who imprinted. Turn this on for groups
`ItemStackSizeMultiplier`	1	Bigger stacks. Some items, like prime meat, ignore it
`PlayerCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier`	1	Lower to 0.5 if your group finds hunger tedious
`DayCycleSpeedScale`	1	Lower is a longer day. 0.5 doubles the length of a full day
`AutoSavePeriodMinutes`	15	How often the world saves. Leave it. Lower means more save hitches

Game.ini: breeding, mating and imprinting

Breeding lives in Game.ini, under its own header. Putting these keys in GameUserSettings.ini does nothing at all.

[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
MatingIntervalMultiplier=0.1
EggHatchSpeedMultiplier=10.0
BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier=10.0
BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier=0.1
BabyImprintAmountMultiplier=1.0
BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier=1.0
LayEggIntervalMultiplier=1.0
CropGrowthSpeedMultiplier=2.0

Key	Default	What it does
`MatingIntervalMultiplier`	1	Wait before a female can mate again. Lower is shorter
`EggHatchSpeedMultiplier`	1	Egg incubation and gestation speed. Higher is faster
`BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier`	1	How fast babies grow up. Higher is faster
`BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier`	1	Time between imprint cuddles. Lower is more often
`BabyImprintAmountMultiplier`	1	How much imprint each cuddle gives
`BabyImprintingStatScaleMultiplier`	1	How much a full imprint boosts stats. Leave it unless you want imprinted dinos stronger
`BabyFoodConsumptionSpeedMultiplier`	1	How fast babies eat. Lower if raising babies drains your troughs
`LayEggIntervalMultiplier`	1	How often dinos drop unfertilized eggs. Lower is more eggs (handy for kibble)

Why imprinting breaks when you speed up maturing

This is the most common breeding mistake. Each cuddle is worth a share of the baby's growth time, so when babies grow 10 times faster, each cuddle is worth more, but you get far fewer of them. Small species can grow up before the first cuddle is even due, and you end up stuck at 0% or a weird 33%.

The fix is to move BabyCuddleIntervalMultiplier down in step with maturing. Our rule of thumb: set it to roughly 1 divided by BabyMatureSpeedMultiplier. Mature at 10x, cuddle interval 0.1. Mature at 20x, cuddle interval 0.05. Cuddles then come about as often relative to growth as on official, so 100% imprint stays reachable.

If cuddles become too frequent for your group to keep up with, raise BabyImprintAmountMultiplier a little instead of slowing everything down.

Rates you set in the panel on GamezServers

On a GamezServers ARK server, three rates are panel settings rather than ini keys: XP multiplier, Taming speed and Harvest amount. They go on the server's start line, which means they override whatever you put in GameUserSettings.ini. Set those three in Settings, and use the ini files for everything else. If you edit TamingSpeedMultiplier in the file and nothing changes, this is why.

A few other things work the same way:

PvE mode is a panel setting and is on by default. Turn it off for PvP.
Extra ? options takes extra start line options written together, like ?AllowFlyerCarryPvE=True?ServerCrosshair=True. These also beat the ini.
Map, join password, whitelist only and the admin password are panel settings too.

For everything in Game.ini, press Stop, open the Files tab, go to ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/, edit and save, then press Start. Hit Backup before you experiment, so one bad edit is a one click undo.

Settings that cost you RAM

Rates themselves are free. What they lead to is not. Fast taming and fast breeding mean far more tamed dinos, and every dino is something the server keeps in memory and simulates. A tribe on 20x breeding can fill a base with hundreds of babies in a weekend.

If your group plans to breed heavily, keep an eye on memory and either cull old stock or move up a plan. Survival Ascended idles at around 8 to 10 GB on The Island before anyone builds anything, which is why our plans start at 12 GB. See how much RAM a game server needs for the general picture.

FAQ

What are good taming rates for an ARK server?

3x suits most small groups. It cuts big tames from hours to well under an hour without making every dino trivial. Go 5x to 10x if your group plays in short sessions.

Do I need to wipe to change ARK server rates?

No. Rates apply on the next start and the world keeps all progress. Dinos already tamed and babies already growing just pick up the new speeds.

Why does my Game.ini do nothing?

Usually the header is missing or wrong. The first line must be [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode], and the server must be stopped while you save the file.

What does official ARK use for breeding?

Official servers run every breeding multiplier at 1, apart from event weekends when Studio Wildcard boosts rates for a few days. Most private servers run breeding far faster than that.

Can I change rates without restarting?

Not permanently. Admin commands change a running server, but the next restart reads the ini files again. Put anything you want to keep in the files or the panel.

Get a server with these settings

A hosted ARK server is online about 60 seconds after payment, with the three main rates in the panel and both ini files a click away in the browser. See ARK: Survival Ascended hosting, or follow the quick start guide and paste in the config above.